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Secrecy shrouds science funding: Scientists have found in the past year that they have lost influence over how funds for research councils are shared out. These decisions are now being made behind closed doors

9 November 1991

By WILLIAM BOWN

On Wednesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced his plans for
public spending in the coming financial year. His speech was the first public
step in the annual process of allocating funds for scientific research.
Last year, one of its results was the closure of the Nuclear Structure Facility
at Daresbury in Cheshire. The way the decision to close the NSF was made
reveals profound changes in the traditional relationships between government,
its advisers and the research councils. Power over Britain’s science priorities
is being transferred to a body set up only to advise and accountable to
no one.

The NSF is one of Britain’s biggest science projects. Built in 1982,
it is a unique machine, designed to propel atomic nuclei into collisions
to reveal their structures. It is acknowledged as the best machine in its
field, and the announcement in March that it was to close provoked protest
from physicists around the world.

The facility’s parent body, the Science and Engineering Research Council,
first discussed the notion of closing the NSF in February. But its fate
had probably been decided, with the knowledge of ministers, the previous
November. This early decision was possible thanks to changes made by the
government in the role of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils that
have quietly but fundamentally changed how science is funded.

The ABRC, an advisory committee attached to the Department of Education
and Science, is at the heart of the allocation process for the government’s
science funds. Every year it produces two documents for the Secretary of
State: the first sets out how big the science …